Honey bee losses defy solitary explanations

What is in this article?:

Opinions number almost as many as there are bees in a hive as to why the bee population in North America has declined almost 50 percent over the past two decades while at the same time the bee population is increasing elsewhere in the world.

Simple, one-word answers make money on Jeopardy. However, suggested solitary explanations as to what's killing honey bees in North America and Europe are little more than buzzwords. There are so many suspected causes to why bees are dying they are umbrellaed under the term Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). CCD encompasses everything from the varroa mite to bad beekeeping.

Opinions number almost as many as there are bees in a hive as to why the bee population in North America has declined almost 50 percent over the past two decades while at the same time the bee population is increasing elsewhere in the world, like in Asia where it is up 426 percent and in Africa where it has increased by 130 percent during the same period of time.

Most agree that the varroa mite and as many as 20 viruses it vectors is part of the CCD puzzle. Annette Schuermann, head of the Bayer Bee Care Center in Monheim, Germany said varroa mite losses in the U.S. total 30 percent.

That state of the art research center was opened last June. A similar center is under construction in Raleigh, N.C. and is scheduled to open later this year.

Bayer CropScience is interested in a worldwide bee population for a couple of reasons. Pollinating bees contribute significantly to the production of more than $200 billion dollars or 9.5 percent of the world's agricultural production. Honey bee pollination is indirectly or directly responsible for one-third of the world's food production, according to Bayer. And that is expected to increase as the world's population increases and the consumption of tree nuts, fruits and vegetable grows, many of which require bee pollination to produce. Bayer CropScience is heavily invested in crop protection products for those markets.

Secondly, Bayer is heavily committed to a new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids and they have been widely implicated in honey bee kills. Neonicotinoids are neuro-active insecticides related to nicotine. The development of this class of insecticides began with work in the 1980s by Shell Oil Company and the in the1990s by Bayer.

The neonicotinoids were developed in large part because they are less toxic to mammals than organophosphatess and carbamate insecticides.

Neonicotinoids are the first new class of insecticides introduced in the last 50 years, and the neonicotinoid imidacloprid is currently the most widely used insecticide in the world. Recently, the use of some members of this class has been restricted in some countries due to evidence of imidacloprid effects on honey bees.

Beekeepers actually welcomed the neonicotinoids because there were fewer bee kills than when organophosphates and carbamates were used.

Recently, though, researchers in the U.S. and Europe are saying there is a link between bee deaths and neonincotidoid use. Maybe not directly, but in sub-lethal doses that make bees more susceptible to diseases. Bayer refutes that. Schuermann says if there is a correlation between bee kills and neonicotinoids is due to "incorrect" pesticide applications.

Not to worry, BAYER and MONSANTO are working on making all commodity crops including heirloom variety GMO so that nothing will need pollination. They already know that pollinators, including bees and butterflies, are pretty much going extinct. They will roll out their new products over the next 5 years. There is already a new GMO tomato coming out this year.

Or to invest in robotic bees being developed by Harvard, via DARPA. Check it out. Strong financial incentive in killing off bees and having a patent on the only viable pollinator available. Those who own the pollinators, own the consumers.

It has been almost a decade and these beekeeping experts keep pointing fingers at possible causes for CCD without taking action.
If a family of pesticides are a potential cause, then ban said pesticides. European countries banned said pesticides and continued to observe colony losses.
If pests and disease are the cause of CCD, then what? Promote beekeeping in every city and town?

Losses will continue from neonics. for a few years after a ban due to their highly persistent nature. Beekeepers want these poisons banned but Bayer is a very rich company and is fighting to keep this from happening. Much of their fight consists of spreading misinformation and pretending to be honeybee experts themselves.

Bayer's new company, Beesfree, Inc. "got what bees crave, its got electrolytes".
"The Company’s first product, BeesVita Plus™, is an all-natural nutritional food supplement that helps honey bees avoid the effects of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)."
Check out Beesfree latest advertisement in National Geographic, "brought to you by Bayer": http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/28/how-are-dying-bees-af...

If I understand Anonymous' 1st comment, its more like the Honey Industry has what Agriculture and the rest of the World 'craves', its got' money-producing pollinators, brought to you by Bayer. According to the Beesfree website, linked through the National Geographic advertisement Anonymous provided, CCD is a result of pests and disease. Could wild or local insects do a better job of pollinating, if provided a healthy habitat to flourish, reducing the cost to farmers for expensive and environmentally destructive transport of European honey bees across the country each year?

It has been proven that cell towers are not the cause. I have had bees for years. My opinion is just like us and the food we eat, there no NO nutrition value in our food. Our soils are depleted of all the nesassary minerals that we and the animals and bees need. The minerals are needed to increase the immune system and the pesticides do not help either. I just know that my hives have been increasing by adding the Excelerite minerals to their food. Try add them, www.us-rem.com

Maybe the bee's are confused. I mean to say, in the past 20 years the US and Europe have moved to GMO. Virtually everything is GMO that is mass produced and combine this with pesticide use and we have pushed the bee to thrive in areas where these practices are less commonly used.

That right that many times cultivated soil loose minerals. Experienced farmers know that solil need to rest for few years to be able to produce a goog crop. Plants on farmlands contain less minerals than non-cultivated one. Bee colony life cycle is broken if there is a malnutrition, especially minerals deficit.

First, it is a basic truth that if Bayer introduces varroa-control chemicals, it will not help bees. It will instead lead to chemical-resistant varroa mites.

The best thing to do is to raise bees that through behavior (grooming each other, e.g.) are naturally mite-resistant. Anything else merely supports bee strains with poor genetics that are dependent upon treatment for mite suppression. Those weak genetics will be sent via drones to feral populations, causing their collapse. This has already happened once in this crisis.

Randy Oliver, quoted in the article, is one of many small bee breeders working on this solution, which is the only long-term solution. Unfortunately, it is breeders like Randy vs. the Goliaths of Big AgChem.

Will your behaviorally-superior European Honeybees teach other important pollinators how to properly groom for the few Varroa mites at are able to reproduce within your genetically superior insects hive? Is this the prelude to a global monoculture of pollinators? The only long term solution is to invest in promoting our invaluable native pollinators.

No dispute that we need to protect native pollinators. The principal threats to them are chemicals and habitat loss.

Varroa mites generally don't attack native pollinators (the literature I found reports that they only attack one species of bumblebee) and they can only reproduce in a honeybee hive. They are really only a threat to the honeybee.

The genetics for mite control already exist in the honeybee genome. If honeybees were not domesticated, the species would adapt to this parasite as maladapted strains collapsed. The important thing is for beekeepers to refrain from supporting weak genetics that will leak into feral populations and set back their adaptation. Chemical treatment such as Bayer proposes is probably the single most effective method to suppress the honeybee's adaptation to this threat.

The principle threat to native pollinators and honey bees is Disease! The Varroa mite is a carrier of disease, and is a threat to honeybees, bumblebees, and other important insects. The beekeeping industry has been too complacent with the Varroa mite for too long, resulting in a global pandemic.

Sorry but the varroa game has been played out, I have seen varroa mite infestations and a colony doesn’t disappear over night. If varoa is the problem it would have been proven already. You can’t keep ignoring the high levels of Imidacloprid in the wax and honey in these hives. Continues exposure even at low levels will doom a colony. Now if you work for monsento this is a good slogan.

As a California beekeeper I can tell you that the beekeeping industry has not been too complacent with the Varroa mite for too long. We have fought this pest for decades. The treatments that are "approved by the government" do not work. The treatments that are "not approved by the government" work. If we use the unapproved treatments we are breaking both California and Federal EPA laws. It is the government that has been to complacent in the fight for bee health.

The bee industry, that creates new queens for new hives each year, are breeding out the insecticide or
the pollen or the sugar syrup or what ever is causing
the bees to not come back to the hives by using the hives that are not having the troubles, thus creating
a bee that is more resistant to what ever is killing or
driving them away from their hives.. it is like the fitus
and strongest are those that survive, and do come back to their hives.
was it not long ago that Russian bee,s were
imported, that were resistant to theVarroa mite ?